


Schemes

by ShiningFrost



Category: Persona 5
Genre: F/M, Swearing, Wingwoman Ann
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-18
Updated: 2018-11-18
Packaged: 2019-08-25 09:40:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16658756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShiningFrost/pseuds/ShiningFrost
Summary: Ann locks Futaba and Yusuke inside a closet.





	Schemes

**Author's Note:**

> I’m...not sure why I wrote this.
> 
> I blame an overpowering Yutaba obsession?

“Can’t believe Shujin’s putting up a Featherman exhibit,” said Futaba. She trailed after Ann with bouncing steps and willed the model to walk faster. “Kosei never does anything awesome.”

“As soon as I heard about it, I knew I had to sneak you in to see it. I just gotta grab something from here first.” Ann stopped at a large door. She took out a key and struggled with the doorknob. “This lock always gets stuck. Mind helping me out?”

“No door’s gonna stand between me and Featherman.”

Futaba’s hand had barely touched the doorknob when the door swung open.

“I can do mag - eep!”

A large force hit her back, shoving her inside. Futaba yelped and stumbled, tripping over an unseen box and landing on her elbows.

Click.

Futaba leaped to the doorknob and jostled it. It didn’t move. She banged on the door with both fists.

“Takamaki Ann, I am going to change your phone’s background pic to tentacle hentai if you don’t let me out this instant!”

“Futaba?”

Flashes of horror movies reeled in her mind, grotesque monsters with poisonous fangs and serial murderers in hockey masks.

She shrieked and swung her backpack out.

“Oof.”

Futaba paused mid-swing. She knew that voice.

“Inari?”

Futaba turned on her phone’s flashlight app. It illuminated Yusuke’s pale face, which showed no signs of distress from its location in an enclosed, dark space.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Ann promised to take me out to sushi if I sat here for an hour.”

Futaba blinked. “She’s overpaying. You’d sit here for a Big Bang burger.”

“I could bargain with her to exchange the sushi for five burgers.” He rubbed his chin. “The sushi is higher quality, but quantity is my premium concern.”

“Dude, you gotta stop letting your stomach steer your brain.”

“We each have our own priorities. Why are you here?”

Futaba folded her arms“Ann said Shujin had a limited edition Featherman figurine exhibit going on.”

“Why would a high school host something like that?”

“I dunno, I’ve only ever attended Kosei, and it’s full of highbrow snobs. Figured a normal high school would be cooler.“

“Perhaps you should reel in your fandom obsessions before it leads you into undesired trouble.”

“Shut it.”

* * *

“Your call cannot be completed at this time.”

Futaba groaned. “No use, not getting any signal here.”

“This room must be quite insulated.” Yusuke knocked on the wall. “I did not hear you two outside.”

“How are you so blasé about this?” Futaba swiveled to sit next to him. Not because she wanted to, but because she didn’t want the door to hit her whenever Ann was done with her schemes and decided to rescue them. “Someone we trusted just tricked us into wasting away here.”

“Ann would not abandon us.” His voice was firm, and Futaba was forced to agree. Ann was overly cheerful with or without cause and obsessed enough with sweets to make a dentist weep (or cheer, depending on their propensity for the extra business), but she was a friend and a good person.

So why were they locked in here?

“Maybe it was a shapeshifter with a taste for human flesh.” Futaba lowered her phone. None of her texts were going through either. “It’s leaving us here until we reach that yummy level of rot.”

“There are faster ways to do that,” said Yusuke. “Kosei’s pottery class has a large kiln that could fit several bodies.”

“Rotted, not burned.”

“A shapeshifter would not be too disconcerting about the difference.”

“It’s worried about the free radicals from burned food.”

“Would it not be concerned about bacterial contamination from the rotting flesh? I was in the hospital for two days for taking the chance on some pungent fish.”

“It could have a symbiotic relationship with the bacteria going on. Like us and yogurt.”

“I have some chicken I forgot on the counter for a couple of days. I could not bear to throw it out, so I stuck it back in the fridge. If I transplanted some of its bacteria into a glass of milk—”

“Don’t.”

“Yogurt is quite expensive on a per gram basis, so if a cheaper method to make it exists—”

“Inari, _no_.”

* * *

_THWACK_.

The plank of wood cracked as Futaba slammed it onto the door. A stray splinter grazed her cheek, and Futaba dropped her useless weapon.

She flopped back onto the floor. “No good.”

“If the metal pipe had no effect, why would a weaker material work?”

“Maybe wood’s super effective against itself, like dragon vs dragon. Least I’m trying to escape.“

“I must be patient for the sushi.”

“Not the burgers?”

“I have few chances to splurge on eating. I think I would find greater happiness dining with Ann at a more expensive establishment.”

Ugh, Ann. Great friend and brave warrior, and she’d secured a meal alone with Yusuke when Futaba’d been trying to do that for months. All attempts had ended in her running away or hitting him.

Futaba paused. She looked at Yusuke, who was studying her intently (she was used to that, the weirdo was always giving the googly eyes to random things. She probably had an extra wrinkle on her shirt), then back to her phone.

Specifically, her last conversation to Akira.

Why was she here, locked in with Yusuke…?

Nah, Ann didn’t know. Akira wouldn’t tell her.

She pursed her lips.

He wouldn’t.

Yusuke’s hands touched her cheek. Futaba jumped.

Unfortunately, in the wrong direction. She careened into Yusuke, bowling him over and landing on top of him. Futaba froze, feeling the tautness of his muscles beneath her. He hadn’t done any physical training since they beat Mementos - how was he still so toned?

Yusuke caressed her cheek.

Her brain recovered its access to her nerves, and she leaped up, shrieking “W-what are you doing!?”

“You were bleeding.” He sat up and moved towards her phone lying on the floor. He put his finger to the light, showing her the smear of blood.

“That’s dangerous! I could have hepatitis.”

“It was worth the risk. I did not want your skin to be marred.” He took out a tissue and wiped his hands.

So this was how she was going to die, by an arrhythmia and overheating. Maybe she’d have enough time to strangle Yusuke first.

Minutes passed. Futaba did not drop dead, but her wobbly knees collapsed, and she landed hard on the floor. She groaned, rubbing her leg.

“Your skin is quite soft,” said Yusuke.

“I moisturize.”

Yusuke half-raised an arm to her, like he was going to touch her again. Her brain lost control for the umpteenth time in his presence, and she could only watch as it came closer and closer.

He let it fall.

The bite of disappointment stung her like Makoto’s hidden set of lock picks.

Stupid, stupid Inari.

* * *

“The blocks should be purple.”

Futaba looked up from her gaming app. “What?”

Yusuke was leaning over her shoulder, watching her play. Futaba was proud of how close he was. He didn’t like physical contact and was the least receptive of the Phantom Thieves to her hugs, so she had made sure to hug him at every opportunity despite his initial protests. Now, he never noticed when Futaba walked so close to him their bodies touched, which she did whenever a female student was eyeing him up and down.

“Purple. The background is gold, so the blocks should be purple for a complementary color scheme.”

“Aren’t green and yellow right next to each other on the color wheel?”

“They are, but this shade of green is too pale to match the gold. It’s clashing to the eye.”

“Dude, it’s only Tetris.”

“Precisely my point. There must be a thousand similar apps available. Making one stand out over another would be a challenging endeavor, so why handcuff oneself by making it aesthetically displeasing?”

“Don’t you have any games on your own phone?”

* * *

“Where is she?” Futaba clutched Yusuke’s phone, glaring at its clock. Her own phone was hooked up to her portable battery, so she’d confiscated his. He didn’t have any games on it.

She shoved it into Yusuke’s face. “We’re approaching two hours. Two. But if I take into consideration how much slower time is moving in here, it’s more like five.”

“I will ask Ann for another sushi outing, since the agreed upon time has doubled. Or you could join us.”

“I’m coming, but I’m not talking to her. You can tell her I’m blacklisting her credit cards at every sweets shop in Tokyo” Futaba grabbed two fistfuls of her hair and tried very hard not to scream. Screaming wouldn’t help. It would in fact harm, because she’d have to listen to Yusuke moaning about her screaming afterwards.

Futaba generally liked closets. The small spaces made her feel protected. Her own bedroom closet had a fortress of blankets and pillows for days she want to snuggle like a mole in its den.

This was not a comfy closet. It was too large, didn’t have a single picture of a Pokémon, and contained an Inari.

Also, the insulation must be thick enough to filter out the oxygen, because Futaba couldn’t think of anything but a high nitrogen saturation that would make her ask “You ever have a crush on anyone?”

Yusuke ran his hand along the edge of the folded paper and creased it. “Yes.”

“Oh.” Futaba’s heart sank. She wished Yusuke would lie more. “A-anyone I know?”

“Akira.”

Futaba dropped her phone.

She picked it up, only fumbling with it once, and fixed the light back onto his half-finished origami piece.

“That’s…not who I expected.”

Yusuke shrugged. “He is very charming.”

“Don’t blame you. I had a crush on him too.”

Futaba regretted the words as soon as they left her mouth. At least Yusuke wasn’t the judgey type.

For non-artistic matters, anyway.

“You ever tell him?” she asked. Thank goodness she was controlling the light source. She didn’t need a mirror to know her cheeks would make a lovely Gryffindor color scheme with the Tetris background.

“No. He is an ideal, the type of person I strive to be. He was the one to pull me out of the darkness, but that is something he does for everyone. I knew I was not unique in that matter and that my feelings would fade in time.”

Yusuke handed her the completed peacock. She put it in her backpack, in the empty front pocket so it wouldn’t get crushed by her books. “Did you ever tell him?” he asked.

“I, well, er…” Damn nitrogen concentration. Why couldn’t real life have a restart button? It would be evolutionary advantageous!

“I mean, yeah, once-” Fuck, why had she admitted that? Being near Inari turned her brain to mush. She needed to distance herself from him. Except that the one time she tried, she’d been so irritable that she was sure her period had arrived two weeks early. “He said we were teammates, let me off gently. I’m over it.”

“You were brave to do so,” said Yusuke. “It’s not easy to open yourself to another, to bare your soul and risk rejection. You’ve come very far, and I’m proud of you.”

Futaba hugged her legs close to her and rested her hand on her knees. Goddamn Inari, she couldn’t tell if this was brotherly pride or…?

She tried to ask if he liked anyone now but couldn’t get the words out. She compromised.

“Wanna go to the Seaside Park and ride the Ferris Wheel?” Futaba was only asking to change the subject. She wished her heart would realize she wasn’t about to enter an Olympic tournament and could thus cool it with the oxygen pumping. “I got some free tickets from the lottery.”

The lottery being Akira, who had sent her a barcode redeemable for two tickets after he’d wormed her current crush out of her. Even though she had explicitly told him this was a phase she was going to grow out of, like she had with him.

“Do they serve free food?”

Futaba rubbed her forehead. “If you’d rather scrounge for supermarket samples, we can—”

“I will accompany you there.”

She dropped her hand. “What?”

“I will go with you, to Odaiba.”

Futaba narrowed her eyes. “There’s lot of couples there.”

“Would it be too crowded? We could go on a weekday instead if it makes you more comfortable.”

“No, I mean - it’ll be dark, with stars, and just us. The two of us.”

Yusuke gave her a blank stare.

Futaba opened her mouth. Yusuke was Not Getting It. She couldn’t see how Yusuke could be this drastically Not Getting It, because she couldn't be more obvious. Apart from actually stating the obvious, but who stated the obvious? Yusuke was an artist. He should be well-versed in subtleties and all that jazz. Not that she was even being subtle!

He smiled at her. The shadows flickering on his face should make it creepy, but for some incomprehensible reason, Futaba had the urge to grab his face and smack his lips to hers.

…fuck him.

Futaba closed her mouth. He’d figure it out at the Ferris wheel.

* * *

‘Shit, shit, shit.’

Ann raced back to Shujin, knocking over a girl with her hands full of textbooks.

“Sorry!”

The girl gave her a (justifiably) rude hand gesture as the books crashed onto the floor. Oops. If she was still there later, Ann would help her pick them up. She looked to be the same size as herself. Ann could offer her the cobalt leather jacket her modeling agency had given her.

Assuming Futaba didn’t kill her first.

Her watch said 20:46, which was just under four hours since she’d shoved Futaba into a Yusuke-containing closet.

Ooooops.

She hadn’t meant to leave Futaba and Yusuke there that long. Just an hour, to let the sparks sizzle, because left to their own devices they’d be dancing around each other two decades from now.

But then her agency had called - a client needed photos for a motorcycle launch event, and he needed them yesterday. It’d been around 18:00 when she’d excused herself to the bathroom and frantically texted her friends. Ryuji was at a track meet at a different school, Makoto was training in a police boot camp, and Haru was in the middle of an executive meeting.

‘Shit.’

Ann cranked the door open.

She was ready to sprint away (not that it would require much effort; Futaba’s running speed was on pace with a geriatric hamster’s, and Yusuke wouldn’t bother), but no one lunged at her as the light shimmered into the closet.

Inside, she saw two figures on the floor. Yusuke was leaning back on some upturned boxes with Futaba’s head in the crook of his arm. Both had their eyes closed and were snoring, Futaba heavily and Yusuke softly.

Ann took out her phone and grinned.

 **Ann** : <img_782>

 **Ann** : told ya I could do it ;)

 **Akira** : hot damn, good job!!!


End file.
